


The Boy from Babel

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Censorship, Flirting, Foreign Language, Friendship, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 03:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. All four nations speak different languages from each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy from Babel

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for last month's 50th round of the Avatar Spirit forum's DrabbleDrabbleDrabble contest. It was a response to the "Language Barrier" prompt. The requirements were as follows:
> 
>  _Write a piece based on the premise that all four nations speak different languages from each other, perhaps even more than one for the bigger and/or more spread out nations. This can be either an AU, a distant past, or distant future fic. Naturally, you're allowed to have certain people adept in more than one language._
> 
> Whoever is the POV character for a scene, English represents their native language. If that character can speak multiple languages, English will also be used to mark that they can comprehend that foreign language.

"Ask them where they're hiding the Avatar. He should be about her age." Zuko pointed to an elderly woman with a weatherworn face. The savages, unable to understand his civilized manner of speech, flinched collectively at the cutting gesture. They chittered and clicked nervously amongst themselves while Lt. Jee translated Zuko's question for them. Like most career navy men of his generation, Jee had picked up a working knowledge of the Winter Folk's speech during the latter Endless Noon campaigns.

Before Jee had a chance to relay the villagers' answer, the idiot native boy charged again. Most conveniently for them both, violence needed no translation. They traded points in a brisk exchange but, before Zuko could get his conclusion across to the inept boy warrior, an outsider interjected himself into the argument in a way that simply knocked Zuko head over heels.

"བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས, Sokka! བཀྲ- er, um, Ainngai, Sokka. Ainngai, Katara!" The saffron-robed newcomer turned and, using _airbending_ , blasted Zuko's translator and escorts into the snow. Zuko managed to hold his ground. His wherewithal seemed to impress the Autumnlander. "Good-morrow, O good Sir! Come you now to seeke me out, thy Avatar?"

The Winter Folk stared on uncomprehending, expression as blank as the snow fields of the Winterland itself.

Zuko himself blinked, shocked to be fluently addressed not just in the Summer Folk's speech but in the formal style maintained by the nobility. It'd been almost three years since Zuko himself had spoken it outside of snatches of conversation with Uncle, who defaulted to the peasants' dialect because of his long soldiering career. Zuko himself both dreamt and thought in that coarse language now, despite his best effort to resist the internal shift.

Unwilling to address a foreigner in the manner of honored nobility, Zuko spoke to the Avatar as he would Jee and any other peasant; in the Summerland vernacular. "I've spent years preparing for this encounter. Training. Meditating. And you're just a - a CHILD!"

The Avatar huffed. "Well flamey-o to you too, Hotman."

"I... what?"

 

* * *

 

Suki didn't have the Avatar's innate gift of tongues. The purity of Kyoshinese was her birthright; clearly a happier one than the Conqueror's Chinish that had long ago infected the mainland, or even the Ice Men's strange speech. Still, she had picked up some harsh Chinish from the drunken sailors she and her warriors policed at the docks, and everyone on Kyoshi Island knew using Chinish simply compounded any insult, so she'd shared her choicest picks of sailors' curses with the southern lout when he disrespected her and her traditions. That meant when he came back to her dojo for another beating, Suki didn't have much left to say to him.

"What?" she snapped.

Rubbing the back of his neck, avoiding her gaze, the outsider clambered down onto his knees. Suki, taken aback by this turnaround, watched silently as he smoothed out a scrap of paper onto the floor. Inked on it was a nonsensical series of bent lines and geometric shapes.

The Ice Man sounded out in rough Kyoshinese, "Ahy am sor-ee, Sookie-sama. Ahy... uh-pol-uh-jahyz... fer mahy rood-nes. Ahy woo'd bee... on-erd... if yuh woo'd... teech mee."

"Did the Avatar put you up to this? Because somehow I doubt you figured out how to say that yourself." The note of suspicion in her voice caught his eye. When their gazes now at last met, she saw the Ice Man wore his shame plainly. Conscience nagging her, Suki crossed her arms. "I know you don't understand this but we don't normally teach outsiders, let alone boys."

Deflated, he kept staring at her.

"Kyoshi's spleen," Suki muttered under her breath. "I hope you can figure out how to put on this uniform without instruction, because I'm not demonstrating. You're not _that_ pretty." Suki nodded and gestured for him to stand. He sprang up, smiling, and Suki found she couldn't help but return the sunny expression.

 

* * *

 

"Suekee?"

"Suki."

"Sukeeey?"

"Suki. _Suki_."

"Su-ki?"

A smile cracked her painted face. "Hai!"

"SUKI!"

"Hai! Hai!"

Sokka felt goofily good at finally getting it right. He tapped his chest. "MY. NAME. IS. SOKKA."

"Izsoakah?"

"Sokka. 'SOK-KA'."

"Saahkaah," the Kyoshi Warrior said slowly.

"Hey! See? Now you're getting it! Isn't that great?"

Suki frowned. "Anata no ossharu koto ga wakarimasen."

"What? Um no, no. Sor- Wait. Hold on." He glanced at the pocket card of phrases Aang had helped him write. All the Kyoshinese had been transliterated in the Water Tribe's syllabary. He quickly found the needed response. "Goh-men nah-sigh."

Sokka looked to Suki, who nodded in acceptance of the apology and then waited for him to speak.

He again pointed to himself. "Sok-ka."

"...Saah-ka?"

 

* * *

 

Katara's heart went out to the canyon guide. She wouldn't want to be caught in a shouting between two tribes over... something. It seemed even the guide was confused. Katara was used to everyone speaking Chinish as a first or second language and had even been taught its basics by Gran-Gran because it was the language of traders, but here that knowledge was of no use.

"Aang," she started to ask, keeping to Chinish since she needed the practice, "what are they talking about?"

"Dunno."

"What? Why?"

Aang explained, "I can only understand the languages my past lives have learned, or that I've picked up myself. I don't know these obscure ones."

Someone in the crowd, Katara didn't see who, threw a punch. The canyon guide hustled away as a fight broke out.

Sokka picked his nose. "Eh. No loss. It was just a big hole in the ground."

They started walking back towards Appa, leaving the feuding villagers behind.

"It's sad," Aang added, taking one last glance over his shoulder at the fight. "I know so many old languages nobody uses anymore, but I'd trade them all if I could help those people."

"Dead languages? Ooo." Sokka said, "Lay one on us, Aang."

Their friend was silent for a moment. Casually, he offered to Sokka, "J'aime bien ta soeur."

Her brother laughed. "You sound like a wood frog trying to talk."

"What'd you say, anyway?" Katara asked.

"I-it's just a pun that doesn't translate."

 

* * *

 

"Huh. Weird."

"Yeah?"

Aang squinted, surveying all the posters and banners in sight at the festival. "It's all in alphabetic script."

Sokka munched on his fire flakes. He spoke quietly, so that his Water Tribe accent wouldn't attract any ears, in the halting Firespeak Aang had pounded into him and Katara over the past few weeks, "It's the Fire Nation. What else would you expect them to use? Fifty bajillion characters like the Earth Kingdom?"

"A hundred years ago-"

"Shhhhh!" Katara hissed.

"-they _did_ ," Aang continued, softer now. "Whenever I visited Kuzon, all the _Summerland_ signs," he emphasized that nation's proper name, which his friends tended to thoughtlessly ignore in favor of the Water Tribe's own label for it, 'Fire Nation', "were written both ways: new-style alphabet and classical characters. The schools were different. Kuzon's parents couldn't even read his school books since they used the new system." He brightened up at the memory. "That's how I learned to read Scientific Reform Summerish. Kuzon taught me his alphabet and I taught him mine."

Katara said, "Maybe they don't use it anymore because the new way is easier?"

"Well, Kuzon's parents said it was supposed to be easier to learn and to use on a printing pressing. Earthbenders can reshape their stoneblock prints super fast but firebenders have to set type by hand." He added after a moment's thought, "A printing press is this thing that copies books really fast."

Katara shot him _that_ look. Sokka said, "Everyone knows what a printing press is, arrowhead."

Behind his mask, Aang grinned and chuckled nervously. "Sorry."

They resumed exploring the festival. While Sokka drifted off to get more fire flakes, Katara glanced at Aang and asked, "So what exactly did Kuzon study?"

"The usual stuff. History. Poetry. Math."

Katara nodded. "I guess that's what it would be." She looked around the crowded marketplace, at the happy families and people on dates. "It's weird to think they're so... normal."

"There _was_ one weird thing about Kuzon's books."

"Yeah?"

"When we read it out loud to his parents, they said his history book was all wrong."

 

* * *

 

"G'day, mate!" He leaned against the table, grinning confidently. "Sokka. Southern Water Tribe."

Yue smiled, and not entirely because diplomacy demanded politeness. Father had told her that they and the Southerners were divided by a common language, more so now than ever because of the last few decades of isolation. He'd neglected to mention how smooth they sounded. Yue had never heard anything like it. "Very nice to meet you."

"So, uh, you're a princess! Y'know, back Down Under, I'm kinda like a prince myself!"

His sister piped up. "Ha! Prince of what?"

"A lot of things!" he snapped back at her. "Don't hassle me! I'm trying to have a bit of a chinwag here!"

"My apologies, Prince Sokka." His younger sister cut a curt bow. Such disrespect for one's elder rankled Yue but she let it pass without giving any outward reaction. Perhaps the ways of Southerners were simply as coarse as their manner of speaking was charming.

Sokka turned back towards Yue. "So. I'm thinking you could give this bloke a fair go and we could go veg together."

"'Go veg together'?"

 

* * *

 

"I discoueryed a librarie hidden in the earth's rootes. I ripped through scroule after scroule, to spy for ancient morselles writ in ancient tongues. Till, hark, Zhao lookes vpon a mappe and recall'd from his Naval studies certaine sacred words of the barbarous Winter Folke; 'moone' and 'ocean'. I knew I had beene blessed and now spyed upon a special gift. Much worthy toile it tooke to translate the other words within. Tis knowledge of the home of Spirits and how they wold be kill'd." Admiral Zhao clenched a fist even as Iroh's expression turned to one of horror. "My fixed destiny is the Doome of both alike."

 

* * *

 

Yue knelt on the grass, its greenness lost in colorless void that the world had become. A short distance away General Iroh cradled the Moon Spirit's corpse in his hands.

"There's no hope now," she whispered, eyes stinging with tears. "It's over."

 **"No."**

Everyone looked up.

To Yue, the Avatar's declaration had been spoken in the language of her people.

To Katara and Sokka, it had also been said in Kyoshinese and Chinish and Firespeak all at once.

To Iroh, it had been issued in more tongues still: the insular manner of Ba Sing Se, the refined Sommer Folke style, the warm tenor of the Sun Warriors, the ecclesiastical prayers mouthed by the Summer Sages, and the broken Autumnlandish his nephew had doggedly acquired from crumbling texts.

Regardless of who heard it, the Avatar's meaning was perfectly clear.

 **"It's not over."**


End file.
